The pandemic has accelerated Latin America’s startup boom
Many businesses are ripe for disruption
WHEN THREE young entrepreneurs decided to start an online marketplace in Argentina in 1999, their chances seemed slim. Only a select few had access to the internet and money was scarce. “There were no local venture-capital firms, and international ones wouldn’t even look at Latin America,” says Marcos Galperin, one of the founders. In 2001 the trio met an investor in Silicon Valley who looked at their sales and asked if the figures were in “millions or billions”. They were in thousands.
This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Silicon linings”
From the January 15th 2022 edition
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